Elon Musk’s Tesla Launches Bitcoin Payment Option For U.S. Customers

Just a few weeks after the electric car company, Tesla, made its first groundbreaking bitcoin purchase, the company has now made it possible for US residents to buy its cars using bitcoin.

In a recent tweet, Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk said that the company would be accepting bitcoin payments for purchases made in the US, in addition to the traditional card payment option.

Musk noted that Tesla will be using internal and open-source software to process the bitcoin payments, adding that the bitcoins amassed from the sale of its electric cars would not be converted to fiat.

He said,

“Tesla is using only internal & open source software & operates Bitcoin nodes directly. Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency.”

The Customer Support page on the company’s official website lays out instructions on how customers can pay for a Tesla using bitcoin. There, the company noted that clients have the option of either scanning a QR code or copying and pasting its bitcoin wallet address to initiate the bitcoin payment.

It also warned clients that an attempt to send any other cryptocurrency instead of bitcoin would result in a loss of funds.

Tesla intends to start the bitcoin payment option in the United States and subsequently expand to other countries in the world where its electric cars are sold.

Tesla’s Bitcoin Adoption Journey

Tesla broke the internet when it announced its very first bitcoin purchase, a whopping $1.5 billion initial investment, one of the asset’s largest initial investments.

The news had even prompted a massive upward surge in the digital asset’s price just a few minutes after the purchase, pushing it to a then all-time high (ATH) of above $44,800.

The company also announced its intentions to start accepting bitcoin as payment for its products. 

Institutional Investors Embrace Bitcoin

While critics are still very skeptical of bitcoin’s potential, it is not stopping several large institutions from joining the crypto bandwagon, using bitcoin as a point of entrance.

Several traditional financial institutions are now providing trust funds and several other bitcoin services for their clients, including deposits, withdrawals, and safekeeping of the digital asset.